Willapa Bay & Long Beach Peninsula

Fact: The green sturgeon of Willapa Bay are among the largest cartilaginous fish in the world, reaching seven feet in length and weighing up to 350 pounds.

Experience: Beaches, sand dunes, marshes, lakes, and old-growth forests all come together to create a coastal wonderland for wildlife and the people who call this Pacific haven home.

What We’re Doing: Conserving and caring for coastal dunes, forests, wetlands, streams, riverfront, and bayfront land. Protecting the drinking water supply by conserving the freshwater wetlands that help groundwater recharge and stay clean.

The Big Picture

Encompassing more than 260 square miles , Willapa Bay is the second-largest estuary on the Pacific Coast and is very much a Northwest treasure. Columbia Land Trust conserved its first property on Long Beach Peninsula in 2001—a small property around Hines Marsh, a 900-acre wetland often billed as the largest “interdunal wetland” on the West Coast. Conserving lands that protect drinking water, wildlife areas, and rare habitats motivate our work here.

Why It Matters

Thanks to low population density and a lack of industrial development, wildlife still thrives on the Long Beach Peninsula and in Willapa Bay. More than 100,000 shorebirds rest and feed during the spring migration; five salmon species pass through the bay en route to natal rivers on the east side of the bay; green and white sturgeon, those bizarrely prehistoric fish, find refuge in the bay itself. The waters of Willapa Bay are relatively pristine, but pristine doesn’t mean unchanged of course. Invasive species, such as spartina, are a constant threat to area waters. By protecting freshwater wetlands, we’re not only protecting wildlife habitat, but also the peninsula’s drinking water, essential to local economies and human health.

Featured Story

With its latest acquisition on Willapa Bay, Columbia Land Trust is building on a large-scale, collaborative conservation effort to protect habitat of international importance.

Columbia Land Trust today announced the conservation of crucial shoreline and forest habitat along Willapa Bay in Pacific County, southwest Washington. On June 13th, the Land Trust acquired 190 acres and nearly a mile of shoreline on East Willapa Bay, located just south of Lynn Point in Pacific County, Washington. This acquisition is located directly…

Updates from the Field

The imperiled marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a cup-sized, coastal bird that few people have had the opportunity to observe. Columbia Land Trust has conserved more than 1,600 acres of tidal wetlands and old-growth forests along Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula and Willapa Bay in hopes that the small populations of marbled murrelets remaining will find…

Our newest acquisition connects a small but critical piece of land to one of Washington's largest and most important nesting areas.

In late June, Columbia Land Trust permanently protected a small piece of land with significant importance to shorebirds and migratory waterfowl on the northern end of Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula near Leadbetter Point State Park. This 27-acre site, consisting of interdunal forests, lakes, and wetlands, builds on 120 acres of wildlife and fish habitat…

A newly acquired property on the Long Beach Peninsula comes with historical and biological importance.

Our connection to the land at times can be so strong that it helps us identify who we are as people and what we choose to care about. That’s the case for Sydney Stevens, a descendant of the Espy family, who founded Oysterville on the Long Beach Peninsula in Pacific County, Washington in 1854. “I…